


Sharpie and Coffee Grounds

by Ias



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Barista Abbie, Friendship, Gen, Rivalry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-29
Updated: 2014-07-29
Packaged: 2018-02-11 00:08:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2045424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ias/pseuds/Ias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ichabod has what is quite possibly the world's most ridiculous name to ever be written on the side of a coffee cup.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sharpie and Coffee Grounds

There was a fine art to swirling whipped cream. You had to get it so that you didn’t have an empty pyramid that would collapse under a stray breeze, but you still had to get that nice circular pattern. Other places just slapped some on and called it a day. To be fair, they probably had much faster service.

Abbie finished topping off her latest drink, a pyramid of sugar tottering on top of a cup of even more sugar. She sprinkled a little cinnamon on top, jammed in a straw, and slid it onto the counter. She pointedly checked the name on the side of the cup again. Here came the fun part.

“White-Chocolate Mocha Pumpkin Chai Latte for… Darth Vader,” she rattled off. She may have tossed a few extra words in there, but the girl with braces who stood up to claim her drink didn’t comment on it. Ever since Abbie’s boss had asked her to start taking down people’s names about two days ago, she’d had four Bill Murrays, one 007 (who predictably had stood up and declared that he was Bond. James Bond), and more characters from Game of Thrones than she cared to remember or pronounce.

“Thank you, weakling,” the kid said in her best Vader impression, as she started furiously stirring the cream into her drink.

“May the force be with you,” Abbie replied solemnly. The bell on the door jingled as she left, and the shop was empty again. Abbie retreated to her stool with a sigh. It had been a long day.

“Isn’t Darth Vader a bad guy?” Andy popped out from the back, another bag of coffee beans under his arm. He looked tired, but that was a daily thing.

Abbie shrugged. “I figured I shouldn’t start a lightsaber battle with customers,” she replied.

“True. I left mine at home anyways,” Andy said, dumping the bag on the counter with a grunt.

Abbie glanced at her watch: four thirty, and things couldn’t be slower. Other than a few highschoolers and the daily regulars, they’d hardly had any business at all. “What time do you get off?”

“Not til five. Trust me, I’m counting the minutes,” he said. It was easy to miss Andy’s sarcasm—he came off as a serious guy, but Abbie had learned he was more deadpan than humorless. Either that, or she’d been letting him walk all over her for the past year. At which point she’d probably have to kick his ass.

“Why don’t you take the rest of the day off?” Abbie suggested. “I can hold down the fort against the zero people likely to show up in the next half hour.”

“I know I’m supposed to argue about my worker’s integrity, but I think I’ll just take the half-hour,” he said, tugging his apron off his head and hanging it up on its peg. He straightened the name-tag, ran fingers through his hair, and then pushed past the swinging door to the counter.

“See you tomorrow, Abbie,” he called out over his shoulder as he strode out the door. Abbie shook her head with a rueful smile and hauled herself back to her feet, shuffling off into the store room. Not like Andy would ever leave her a mess to clean up, but she had nothing better to do. Maybe she could organize the beans alphabetically again. That was always good for a laugh.

Abbie wrinkled her nose as she worked. She'd never really liked the smell of coffee. Or the taste of coffee. Or anything about coffee at all, really. It was just so bitter unless you added a cup of milk and sugar, and then it was pretty much not even coffee at all. She did not miss the irony of her current occupation.

She had made her way to the C’s when she heard the bell tinkle. With a sigh she straightened her back and headed out to the counter.

“Andy, I swear if you forgot your sunglasses again—” She stopped short. A wiry stick of a man was standing at the counter, his thin fingers drumming a tuneless beat on the marble. Abbie recognized him instantly—he came here often, but not enough for her to classify him as a regular. His hair was long and messy, and all of his clothes looked like he’d simply walked into a Goodwill and grabbed the first five things on the rack. He also had a pager, and seemed to actually use it. She couldn't decide whether he was hispter or just homeless. He’d been coming here for months, maybe longer, and never exchanged more than a few accent-tinged pleasantries with his order. Their interactions were always the same: he came in, he ordered, he sat down, he left. Abbie didn’t mind. Routines were nice.

 “Sorry about that,” she said, hurrying up to the counter with a smile. “What can I get you?” She practically had to crane her head back in order to look him in the eye. Up close she could see he looked slightly dirty, but in a natural sort of way. Like he’d stumbled out of the woods and walked right into her coffee shop.

“Medium coffee, please,” he said, not unpleasantly.

“Coming right up,” Abbie said, ringing up his order with a flourish. Almost too late, she remembered.

“Oh, and can I get your name?” she asked before he could walk away to his customary seat near the window.

He blinked—this must have been the first time they had strayed from the script, and clearly it threw him for a loop. “My name? Why?”

“We’re supposed to be writing them on the cups now,” she said with a shrug. “It’s a new thing.”

The man glanced around. “But there’s no one else here.”

“Well you don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Abbie said, repressing a prickle of annoyance. “It’s just the new policy. Boss’s orders and all.”

“I see.” The man paused like he was debating whether to tell her or not. Maybe he was some kind of secret agent. That might explain the sparse conversation, though probably not the wacky clothes. “It’s Ichabod,” he said at last.

Abbie’s eyebrows shot up, which might not have been very professional, but come on. Suddenly she didn’t blame him for being so reluctant. “That’s…very unusual,” she said. “Family name?”

“No, just unfortunate,” he replied. Abbie couldn’t tell whether he was pissed off by her questions or just baffled that she was asking them. Not a very social guy, by the looks of it. Sort of jumpy.

“Alright then, Ichabod,” she said. “I’ll have that coffee up in a minute.”

He hovered around near the counter while she poured his coffee, his usual chair forgotten. It was sort of funny, really, how thrown he was. She poured his coffee and snapped on the lid, sliding it over to him with an encouraging smile. “One black coffee for a Mr. Ichabod.”

He picked up the cup like it was a foreign object and stared at the smudge of black handwriting with a frown. Abbie smiled ruefully. “So how badly did I misspell it?”

“Well you certainly made a valiant effort,” he said, a note of resignation in his voice. Clearly living under the shadow of that name had done some damage. She doesn’t blame him for not wanting to share it.

“I’ll plead creative license,” Abbie said. He wasn’t turning to leave, which again was abnormal, so she plunged on. After all, she’s curious. Not everyday she meets a guy named Ichabod. “I always hated my name too, though it’s not nearly so bad. Not that Ichabod is bad,” she said quickly.

“No, I’m afraid it’s quite terrible,” he said. “Besides, Abbie is a nice name.”

He hadn’t so much as glanced at her nametag. Maybe he had been paying more attention than she thought.

"It's a bit boring," she said, resisting the urge to lean on the counter and put him even higher above her than he was. "When I was a kid, I always tried to get people to call me Starabella. Never quite stuck."

A wry smile crept over the corner's of Ichabod's mouth. "No, I suppose not."

The door jingled as another person stepped inside. Abbie's felt her teeth grit unconsciously as she realized who it was. The man strode in, all burly muscles and white teeth. A Starbucks apron was still wrapped around his waist. He had the kind of face that was simultaneously creepy and completely unrecognizable, so you were more likely to look anywhre else. Abbie had always resisted that urge. Mostly because she hated him.

"Good afternoon," she said in her sugary customer voice as Ichabod stepped aside. He didn't leave, she noticed. He was sticking around to watch.

"Well hi there," the man said, striding right up to lean on the counter with both forearms as he surveyed the shop. Not the menu—his eyes flickered over the shelves of coffee beans, the outdated blender, the dusty blackboard with the flavor of the day. He drew a finger across the counter and inspected it for dust.

"I'll get a Caramel Macchiato with a shot of Cinnamon Dolce," he said idly.

Abbie's smile could have been lockjaw. "I'm sorry, sir. We don't have that drink here."

The man's eyebrows raised in fake-surprise. "Oh, really? Guess that's just a Starbucks thing. I'll just get a coffee. You can handle that, right?"

She didn't respond, and she didn't ask for his name. She made the coffee as quickly as she could without messing it up and practically slid it off the pick-up counter. She hated showing any sign of annoyance, but damn, this guy was impossible.

He stepped up to take his coffee as if he hadn't been watching and judging her technique the entire time, and took a long drink. "Hmm," he said. "A little over-brewed, but decent complexity to the flavor. Not your best, but passable. You're really getting there."

"Thanks," she said flatly. She wasn't sure what was worse: having to listen to his condescending compliments, or having to accept them with a smile.

 Before he took another drink, he paused and looked at her strangely. She hadn't really been looking at him, only staring at the coffee cup and willing it and its owner to disappear, but he grinned at her as if she had.

"Like my new tattoo?" he said, flashing a dark patch on his wrist at her.

She squinted at it dubiously. "Is it an anchor?" she said at last.

The smug grin on the man's face fell slightly. "What? No, it's a bow and arrow. Look, you can see the fletching."

"Ohh," Abbie said blankly. "Sorry. It looked like an anchor."

With a sullen glare, the man grabbed his coffee. "It's only a matter of time before this place goes out of business," he said, taking a loud slurp and grimacing. "But if you keep improving, you might even be able to get a job here when it reopens as a new Starbucks. You'll have to be completely retrained, of course, but don't worry. There's always hope." With a wink and a grin with just a few too many teeth, he sauntered back out of the shop. Abbie had never heard a sound so sweet as the door slamming closed behind him.

"What a prick," Ichabod said the second he had left.

A short laugh burst from Abbie's throat, half out of surprise. "I know, right?" She'd almost forgotten he was there. It was nice to have a little solidarity.

"He's the reason I stopped going to the coffee shop on my campus," Ichabod said. "Bad people don't make good coffee."

"You look a bit old to be a student," Abbie said.

"That's likely because I'm a professor," Ichabod replied.

Abbie couldn't keep the disbelief off her face. "You teach?"

"History, in fact," Ichabod replied. "That surprises you?"

"Well you don't really look like a professor," Abbie said. Diplomacy was never her strong suit.

Ichabod cocked an eyebrow. "And what do I look like, exactly?" There was something in his tone that told her he was playing alone.

She grinned. "Well frankly, Ichabod, you look like you went straight from a war reenactment to dumpster-diving outside of an indie-rock concert."

That got an actual laugh out of him, though he fought it back down quickly enough. "Are you always so flippant with the customers?"

"Hey, don't take it the wrong way," she said, laughing as well. "You wear it well. All the other hipsters are jealous when you walk in."

He frowned. "I'm not a hipster."

"Dude, you wear a scarf and ride a bike everywhere," she said. "Hipster."

"Well I'm sure I trust your judgment on that," Ichabod said peevishly. Abbie was already starting to like the guy. It was so easy to tick him off.

"Tell you what," Abbie said. "Next time you come in here while I'm working, I'll give you a free drink."

Ichabod looked surprised. "Why would you do that?"

She grinned. "Because you called that guy a prick, and it kind of made my day."

The guy looked a little confused, like he wasn't sure how to handle someone doing something nice for him, but like he was enjoying it anyways. "Well, the pleasure was mine," he said with a small smile. "Perhaps I'll time my next visit with our most unsavory customer again, with some fresh adjectives in mind."

"Well, the free coffee is a one-time thing," Abbie said. "But my appreciation and admiration are forever."

"Then I suppose that will have to be enough for me," Ichabod said with a smile. "Until next time, then. Somehow I doubt it will be long."

"It better not be." The sound of the closing door was much less sweet this time. It wasn't every day that she met a guy named Ichabod, and it was even rarer to find someone she could actually imagining hanging out with. Even if that guy was a history professor with a weird name and an aversion to modern technology.

Stranger things had happened, right?

 

 

 


End file.
